Wouldn’t it be nice if our circle time always looked as calm and peaceful as the teddy bears in this picture? Well, even though the young children we teach may be even cuter than teddy bears, they’re rarely as good at sitting still. Real, human children tend to talk, kick their feet out, touch the […]
Category Archives: Words of Wisdom
“The way to have good ideas is to have lots of ideas, and throw away the bad ones.” Linus Pauling Linus Pauling, one of the only two people in history to win two Nobel Prizes (the […]
“We do a lot of improv here.” – Buttercup the Hedgehog in “Toy Story 3” This is my favorite scene in the wonderful movie “Toy Story 3.” Woody the cowboy has just arrived at the home of […]
Nursery rhymes stimulate memory, improve language skills, develop appreciation for music, enrich vocabulary, develop phonemic awareness, encourage thinking skills…..and …..they are fun! – Jackie Silberg Jackie Silberg has written many books of wonderful activities for infants, […]
“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” – Plato In my music classes with young children I see this every day. Music brings enthusiasm, energy, smiles, ideas, more life to children’s […]
“The job of adults is to make sure natural curiosity is supported and not squashed. Curiosity cannot be directly taught and doesn’t have to be; it emerges and can be nurtured.” – Anne Mitchell […]
“Talent is the desire to practice.” – Malcolm Gladwell, “Outliers” I don’t know when I realized this, but at some point in my teaching career I realized that all my amazing ideas for music activities for young children – or what I thought were amazing ideas – didn’t always translate into amazing lessons. In […]
Creative kids are often daydreamers… What’s going on in a dreamer’s head is likely to be original ideation, visualization, imaginative thought, and creative problem solving. Daydreaming is a good thing. Marjorie Sarnat As a lifelong daydreamer, […]
To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong. – Joseph Chilton Pearce I’m continually amazed at the creativity of the young children I teach, but I shouldn’t be. Children have one of the prime prerequisites for creativity – they’re not […]
Our aim is not only to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his innermost core. – Maria Montessori I’m not a Montessori teacher, but I absolutely love this quote! When was the last time you thought of your aim as a […]
Music (and Science) For Young Children 